Overview

Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith Small

A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.

New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined.

In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture--and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies.

Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breast-feeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her?

These are but a few of the important questions Small addresses, and the answers not only are surprising, but may even change the way we raise our children.

Product Details

About the Author

Meredith F. Smaill is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University and the author of Our Babies, Ourselves; What's Love Got to Do with It?; and Female Choices. She writes frequently for Natural History Magazine, Discover, Scientific American, and is a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

In this thoroughly researched and well-referenced book, anthropology professor Small (What's Love Got To Do with It, LJ 9/15/95) explores ethnopediatrics, an interdisciplinary science that combines anthropology, pediatrics, and child development research in order to examine how child-rearing styles across cultures affect the health and survival of infants. Small describes the different parenting styles of several cultures, including (but not limited to) the nomadic Ache tribe of Paraguay, the agrarian !Kung San society of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, and the American industrialized society. In discussing these societies, she illustrates that although there are numerous ways to care for babies, some cultural norms of care are actually at odds with the way infants have evolved. Thus, parents should expect "trade-offs" when they act in opposition to how babies are designed. Small speculates that the custom of mothers in industrialized nations to wean early or not to breastfeed at all may be responsible for the higher incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, more medical problems and fatalities, and more crying than is commonly noted in babies of more agrarian societies. She urges parents to recognize that although their native culture does have an impact on their parenting, they can adopt aspects of child rearing from other cultures, if they choose. Highly recommended for all anthropology and child development collections and appropriate for general audiences as well.--Ximena Chrisagis, Wright State Univ Libs., Dayton, OH

Library Journal

Small (anthropology, Cornell U.) examines how biology and culture combine to shape the ways we raise our children. While all babies have basically the same biological needs (sleep, food, emotional attachment), Small finds that these needs are being fulfilled in often dramatically different ways from culture to culture. For a general audience. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

A look at the not-so-new idea that how babies eat, sleep, and cry is determined by the culture into which they are bornþincluding a subtext that the ever-evolving parenting mode in the US may still not be all that baby-friendly. Small (Anthropology/Cornell; What's Love Got to Do With It?, 1995) is an expert on primate behavior and a convert to the infant science of ethnopediatrics, which brings together medical, developmental, and social science researchers to study babies not as unformed adults but as beings in their own right. To start off, Small reviews the evolutionary data, exploring why human infants have such a long period of dependency and how the intimate bond is created that primes adults to nurture their offspring over such a long period. The child-rearing practices of the African !Kung San and Gusii and the South American Ache groups, modern Japanese, and contemporary Americans are compared. The range is wideþthe San mothers, for instance, are inseparable from their babies, carrying and nursing them "on demand" until they are four or five years old. Americans separate from their babies immediately, installing them in a separate bed or room, even before mother and child leave the hospital. These varied styles reflect the varied goals of the adult culture, the San emphasizing cooperation, the US individuality. Chapters are also devoted to crying, breast feeding, and sleepþincluding speculation that babies who sleep with a parent may be less at risk for SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Small clearly approves frequent, if not continuous, bodily contact between child and parent, but emphasizes that successful parenting is a series of trade-offs. What worksin one culture may fail in another. No breakthrough research here, but neatly packaged information that elicits new respect for babies and their ability to survive and thrive, whether in the Kalahari or in Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent 4.2 out of 5based on
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5 reviews.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

I recently became a new mom, and was looking for information on babies that was NOT written by a pediatrician. Our Babies, Ourselves (no relation to Our Bodies, Ourselves) is written by an anthropologist, who provides more of a worldwide view that just an Americanized view. This book made me feel at ease about how I am beginning to raise my child, and that "right and wrong" ways of childrearing don't exist in much of the world. The research and information on biology and medicine are phenomenal and very intriguing.

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

Anonymous

More than 1 year ago

This is a wonderful book. Meredith Smalls gives us a fascinating anthropological view of parenting. I first read this book when my oldest child was an infant and I was struggling with listening to all the well-meaning advice of friends an relatives.This book validated all my natural parenting instincts.

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